Rochester Metagame Analysis

[Meddling Mike]

I realize this is pretty belated at this point, but I originally intended this to be an article on starcity and it's written as such, you can take/leave the analysis as you see fit.

Rochester Metagame Analysis

So another SCG event has come and gone, and you know what that means, another metagame analysis. Let's have a look at the numbers shall we?

Day 1 Breakdown
(Decks with an asterisk next to them indicates a top 8 appearance)

Oath of Druids 18
CS 17**
Grim Long 7**
Dragon 5**
UbaStax 4
GAT 4
U/W Fish 4
Friggorid 3
Staxless Stax 3
Gro 3
Intuition Tendrils 3
Bomberman 3*
Gifts Control 3
Gifts 3
B/U/R Aggro Control 2
Sullivan Solution 2*
Dawn of the Dead 2
B/W/R Aggro Control 2
Stax 2
Gifts Oath 2
EBA 1
U/W Control 1
Shop Slaver 1
The Jester 1
Landstill 1
Ravager 1
TNT 1
MUD 1
Sensei Sensei 1
FCG 1
URBana Fish 1
Workshop Aggro 1
Drain TPS 1
U/G/W Madness 1
Goblins 1
Mask 1
B/U/W Aggro Control 1
T1T 1
Confidant Control 1
U/G Threshold 1

Day 2 Breakdown

Control Slaver 17*
Oath of Druids 9
Grim Long 7*
Dragon 5*
Intuition Tendrils 5
Stax 4*
U/W Fish 4
Gifts Control 3
Bomberman 3**
Scepter Control 2
Bob Bomberman 2
Gifts Oath 2
Staxless Stax 2
Mask 2
Sullivan Solution 2
Confidant Control 2
MUD 2
Dawn of the Dead 2
Gifts 1*
U/R Control Slaver 1*
T1T 1
U/G/W Madness 1
B/U/R Aggro Control 1
Kobold Clamp 1
Mono Blue Control 1
GAT 1
Ravager 1
U/G/R Madness 1
Drain TPS 1
Friggorid 1
Workshop Aggro 1
2 Land Belcher 1
Goblins 1
Meandeck Tendrils 1
U/G Threshold 1
Shop Slaver 1
B/W/R Aggro Control 1
U/G/W 1

Control Slaver (35 appearances) (11.4% of Slaver players made top 8) (16.8% of the Metagame)
CS was the most popular deck overall at Rochester, this comes as no surprise seeing as Ugo Rivard has taken home the top prize with CS the last two Rochester tournaments and coming off a strong performance at the Previous SCG tourney in Richmond. Despite it's increasing popularity it still managed to place a respectable number of people past the cut including a version of control slaver that cut black which made top 8 day two. It should be noted that this was still the statistically worst performance by CS in quite some time. This may indicate that the metagame is adapting to beat CS.

Oath of Druids (27 appearances) (0% of Oath players made top 8) (13% of the metagame)
There was quite a bit of controversy on TMD regarding Oath coming into this tourney due to it's supposed success at some smaller tournaments in the midwest. A popular thread advertised "ICBM Oath, or 12 easy steps to win Rochester" (http://www.themanadrain.com/index.php?topic=28472.0) It seems they didn't read the part where you're supposed to win........or make top 8.........or not 0-2 drop. Oath was the most popular deck on day 1 and not a single one made top 8. The highest finishing Oath deck you ask? 30th PLACE!!!! With that many people playing it you would imagine that one of them would have fallen ass backwards into the top 8 or anywhere near the top 8, but this was clearly not the case. I think there may be enough empirical data to safely say that Oath simply does not do well at larger vintage events. The last time an Oath deck made it past the cut was an 11th place finish to make the top 16 at Waterbury in January. It seems that half the oath players wised up for day 2 of Rochester and ditched the deck. It has been brought to my attention that Oath was able to claim top 8 slots at the recent heroes con event run by starcitygames.com in Charlotte which would seem to invalidate my assessment of this deck's performance, but I completely stand by what I said here. From what I understand the attendance for the Charlotte event was approximately half that of the Rochester despite a similar prize support structure. Between the low attendance and the lack of posted decklists it is almost impossible to incorporate anything from that tournament into this analysis.

Grim Long (14 appearances) (21.4% of Grim Long players made top 8) (6.7% of the metagame)
Grim Long was extremely successful at this tourney and also the most popular storm-based combo deck. With Grim Long's excellent power and speed it comes as no surprise that this deck performs so well.

Dragon (10 appearances) (30% of Dragon players made top 8) (4.8% of the metagame)

I'd like to begin with an excerpt from my previous metagame analysis:

Dragon again barely shows up to a major tournament, but still manages to land somebody in the Top 16. These results were almost identical to the SCG Rochester tournament preceding Waterbury. Underplayed, maybe?

Dragon appears to be entirely dead, which is unfortunate. I think if this deck arrived in greater numbers it could perform on par with the stronger decks in the format. Perhaps this deck is just too vulnerable for most people's tastes, catching much of the "splash damage" of graveyard hate and creature removal spells intended for other targets.

Peter "Diceman" Olszweski seems to have breathed new life into this dying archetype making some notable tweaks to the deck including maindeck Sundering Titan, Deep Analysis and Read the Runes and taking home 2 pieces of power over the course of the weekend. Dragon was certainly the "Dark Horse" on this metagame showing up in small numbers and putting up some impressive results.

Stax (15 appearances) (6.7% of Stax players made top 8) (7.2% of the metagame)

Traditional Stax, UbaStax and Staxless Stax were the 3 Stax builds that arrived at Rochester and would take home the prize on day 2. Beyond this one shining moment, stax was otherwise unsuccessful with no other top 8 appearances. Stax continues to put up unimpressive numbers at large events.

Sullivan Solution (4 appearances) (25% of SS players made top 8) (1.9% of the metagame)

A new deck created by Adrian Sullivan was able to take home the prize on day 1. The deck seems to set up a soft lock by flipping Erayo and then getting a dimir cutpurse on the table........yeah......so you get them down to zero cards and they can never get out from under Erayo because anything they draw is countered........cute huh? Personally, I have some serious doubts about the viability of this deck now that the surprise factor is gone, but with only 4 appearances as a sample size it's a bit early to make any conclusions.

Bomberman (8 appearances) (37.5% of Bomberman players made top 8) (3.8% of the metagame)

Bomberman isn't really anything new, it always shows up in relatively small numbers at most major tournaments, it just never really won much before now, but this seems to have been the breakout tournament for Bomberman as it put the highest percentage of people playing it into the top 8. The question that came to mind for me when thinking about bomberman is "what's changed between then and now for this deck that has allowed it to have this unprecedented success?" The biggest change seems to be cutting the meddling mages in favor of mana leaks and it seems all versions have dropped Fact or Fiction. Perhaps this unique metagame is also responsible for Bomberman's success at this tourney.

Gifts (10 appearances) (10% of Gifts Players made top 8) (4.8% of the metagame)

I was somewhat surprised to see gifts show up at all since the DCI decided to errata and now re-errata time vault in order to neuter the FlameVault combo that was oh so popular in gifts decks. Sure, I figured Brassman would show up playing SSB because he's nostalgic like that, but people seem to have opted for a more combo oriented build usually incorporating Tendrils of Agony as a win condition. The build that took second place was a somewhat unique build piloted by Eli Kassis. Dark Confidant seems to be the main draw engine in this build and goes to Sundering Titan rather than Darksteel Colossus as the fat tinker target.

Hope to see you all at SCG's upcoming Vintage Tourney in Boston, finally a huge vintage event only minutes away!

Michael Lydon
Meddling Mage on TMD/SCG
lydonmh at bc.edu
Team Reflection

[EnialisLiadon]

Wow--this is excellent!  I had always missed the mindless compiled statistics (4 deathlace in the tournament?  reaplace is coming back?  sweet!) but this focuses on the important stuff:  what and how much of it was played, how many of them top8'd and how much a certain deck made up the metagame.

Good work!

[Smmenen]

I did a metagame analysis of Rochester day one here:

http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/12167.html

[cssamerican]

Pretty good analysis.

One thing that I have picked up from looking at the results of this tournament is, understanding your deck's match-ups better than anyone else leads to success. I know that sounds really obvious, but I don't think everyone really understands this concept. I think Dragon, Bomberman, and SS did so well because the people piloting them are very familiar the match-ups they are likely to face; however, it is extremely likely their opponents have very little experience in these match-ups. SS was completely new, Dragon had a serious face-lift, and I doubt anyone put much time in testing against Bomberman before this tournament. Dicemanx has preached many times on the value of surprise, and I think this was a perfect example of this. Seems to me that if you want to increase your chances of tournament success start learning a good deck that is unpopular for no reason other than it just never caught on. Your deck might not be the objectively best deck in every match-up, but in every game you will be the one prepared, while they are trying to feel their way through the match.

[Meddling Mike]

I did a metagame analysis of Rochester day one here:

http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/12167.html

Not being a subscriber to SCG Premium, I was unable to read this article. I am curious to know what your analysis was based on (empirical data like mine, impressions from having been an actual attendee, something else?) and if you came to the same conclusions I did and if you did not then why?

[Cross]

Again this analysis is really helpuful for non-premium members and I would encourage you to do more of this.

As far as what the numbers say, I think it's surprising oath has done so poorly, especially with it's new toys (SSS). It seems like oath needs either a major face-lift, or a stronger win condition.

To me it looks like the metagame is diverse in decks that are winning, even when it's lopsided in decks that are being played.

[Chiz]

Perhaps this unique metagame is also responsible for Bomberman's success at this tourney.

Perhaps Bomberman is a good deck since a long time, but nobody wanted to accept it / understand it (except in Québec where it is played). Bomberman won/split so much tournaments here and Bomberman made 3 top8 in P9 tournaments before (2 top8 at Syracuse P9 tourney (Results was never posted, despite the ~100 players in the tourney), and 1 in Bladswindville). Bomberman show up always a litlle, because it seems that almost only quebekers actually play Bomberman.
By the way, I really don't like to include Bob-berman (It's Bob-berman and not Bob-Bomberman, even if SCG misregistered Bob-Berman!) like it's a Bomberman... It's not! They are really different decks! To me, it's like saying SS is like Bird Shit, because they both play Waste + Stiffle to make mana denial, they both Beat opponent and they both have some Counters.

[Methuselahn]

Perhaps this unique metagame is also responsible for Bomberman's success at this tourney.

Perhaps Bomberman is a good deck since a long time, but nobody wanted to accept it / understand it (except in Québec where it is played). Bomberman won/split so much tournaments here and Bomberman made 3 top8 in P9 tournaments before (2 top8 at Syracuse P9 tourney (Results was never posted, despite the ~100 players in the tourney), and 1 in Bladswindville). Bomberman show up always a litlle, because it seems that almost only quebekers actually play Bomberman.
By the way, I really don't like to include Bob-berman (It's Bob-berman and not Bob-Bomberman, even if SCG misregistered Bob-Berman!) like it's a Bomberman... It's not! They are really different decks! To me, it's like saying SS is like Bird Shit, because they both play Waste + Stiffle to make mana denial, they both Beat opponent and they both have some Counters.

I don't think Mike's attacking Bomberman here.  Saying "Nobody wanted to accept it / understand it" is a flagrant error.  In fact, several members of Mike's own team have been playing Bomberman not only in testing, but at tournaments.

If a deck has Trinket Mages, Salvagers, counters, and plays out like the traditional Bomberman, then it's Bomberman, whether you have Bobs, or Pikulas, or whatever.  It's the same skeleton, just fleshed out differently.  Really.

[Chiz]

In fact, several members of Mike's own team have been playing Bomberman not only in testing, but at tournaments.

Something I didn't know. But it's true that's not everybody who doesn't accept it / understand it, but still, there was not so much people seing Bomberman as a good deck (even with 3 top8 in P9 tournaments in USA and a 9th place in Rochester in December). There was lots of people seeing me playing it at those tournament and who doesnt understand why we had those result, because Bomberman is a "bad combo deck". Well, that's what people said before they play against it, after playing against it they are impressed and usually they find Bomberman good... It's just frustrating to always tell everyone that Bomberman is a good deck, because here it is winning tournaments since november 2004. Every times we go to USA we have to argue that Bomberman is a good deck, I just hope we wont have to do it next time...

If a deck has Trinket Mages, Salvagers, counters, and plays out like the traditional Bomberman, then it's Bomberman, whether you have Bobs, or Pikulas, or whatever.  It's the same skeleton, just fleshed out differently.  Really.

That's the problem! Bob-berman doesn't play out like a traditionnal Bomberman!  Bomberman is a Control / Combo / Beatdown backup deck, while Bob-berman is a Beatdown / Disruption / Combo backup deck. It's not like we just had Bob to Bomberman, we had Duress, Therapy, Cutpurse, Wasteland... The playstyle of the two decks is so different, that's why I don't like to call it a Bomberman deck.